


Waking Hour

by ingthing



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Confessions, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley's Century-Long Nap (Good Omens), Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, This is an emotion bomb ENJOYY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21622585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingthing/pseuds/ingthing
Summary: Crowley oversleeps again and learns, upon waking, how exactly his slumbering had affected Aziraphale the first time.Written for the Oh Lord Heal This Server Gift Exchange 2019.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 181
Collections: O Lord Heal This Gift Exchange





	Waking Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_girl_with_many_fandoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_girl_with_many_fandoms/gifts).



> I'm not typically angst-minded but I love that sweet, sweet communication! And man, do they _need_ it.
> 
> This was a gift for a_girl_with_many_fandoms. I hope you like it! <3
> 
> (Un-beta'd, but I tend to be fairly scrupulous as I write anyway.)

When Crowley awakened, it was to a rude ray of sunlight right in his eye. Hot, blinding, inconvenient. His annoyance was well justified, the demon thought. Whoever invented blinds that wouldn't close all the way ought to be cursed or, perhaps, be given some sort of Hellish commendation. 

It was Crowley, of course, who came up with the idea, and he _had_ received a commendation for it. Yet another one of his brilliant plans that had come back to bite him, fanged and open-mouthed, on the arse.

Blearily, he woke his body up—like sobering up, but with no cottony aftertaste. At the touch of his fingers, his smartphone (which had been abandoned with no power cord attached on his nightstand) blinked to life, and its subsequent barrage of dings and vibrations reminded Crowley of the babbling of an abruptly unsilenced man—which was quite appropriate. Crowley only ever kept notifications turned on for one name in his contacts list, after all, and he and Aziraphale had both been freed from duty earlier that year.

Year. Crowley frowned, pausing as his thumbs scrolled idly through the little text boxes on screen. He couldn't seem to remember what year it was, which usually meant one of two things.

Either he'd had a really, really awesome night, or he overslept again.

By the look of the wall of missed calls and text messages ( _text messages_ , which the angel only used as a last resort) on his phone, it was the latter. Crowley's mouth dropped open in dismay, brows furrowed deep, as the messages dropped in tone from concern, to indignance, to something thinly veiling alarm. He'd fucked up, hadn't he? He had, he had. The messages were dated from… Crowley scrolled back up to check the date and cursed aloud.

Four months. He'd been asleep for four months. Fuck.

It didn't require thought at all to snap on his usual clothing, and it didn't require thought to get into his car and barrel through London with the recklessness of an orangutan being taught to drive manual shift. He thought of this instead:

Everything Crowley did backfired on him eventually. Circumvent the end of the world one day, destroy the only relationship he's ever cared about the next. _Aziraphale, Aziraphale._ A little nap was all it took for everything to fall apart, because of course it was—a needle in a haystack, impossible to foresee but which drew blood all the same.

He could only hope, as much as he'd ever hoped, that Aziraphale hadn't upped and left without a trace.

He knocked on, then impatiently burst through, the bookshop's double doors as they opened for him (thank Someone, they weren't boarded up or plastered with some notice of leave or burnt down altogether, though the shades were drawn as they usually were). Momentum almost bowled Crowley over as he halted in the circular arch of the entryway. There was Aziraphale, stopped by the book-laden table in the atrium of the bookshop. He must have been about to answer the door. Those round, sea-grey eyes were trained with some disbelief on Crowley. He's motionless for a second, with his hands twined together in front of him. Then, he seemed to wobble, stepped one foot back, and anchored one hand onto the surface beside him.

"Crowley."

"Angel," the demon replied, with a choke in his voice. Aziraphale sounded shattered. "I got your texts, I'm sorry I didn't answer, I was just–" 

"Sleeping," Aziraphale finished, a dullness to his tone. His fingers fiddled at his vest buttons, and he took a breath. "Yes, I- I know." He raised his brows in emphasis, then an awkward smile appeared, disappeared, and appeared again on his lips. It was punctuated with a flicker of his gaze from Crowley to the ground. Crowley noticed, he always did. Six thousand years of noticing made it more than muscle memory. When Aziraphale spoke again, it was with a faux-chipperness. "Sweet dreams, I hope?"

Always with the pleasantries. Crowley should stop this line of questioning right now; there were more important things to talk about. Still, he gave Aziraphale a curt shake of his head. "Didn't have any. Just one of those… dreamless sleeps," he answered, shoving his restless hands into his pockets. Then, he frowned and muttered, "or I've just forgotten."

Aziraphale bowed his head. "I see. Well," he diverted, with yet another placating smile, "welcome back to the world of the living, dear boy. Now, why don't I crack open a bottle of scotch for the two of us?"

So that was it, then. No mention of the missed calls. No mention of the voicemails that had clogged up Crowley's answering machine. No explanation for the one-sided, relentless check-ins and questions in Crowley's SMS history.

It was the middle of the day, and far too early for the angel to be drinking, but Crowley nodded and followed him eastward as he drawled, "alcohol sounds _lovely_." 

  
  


Perhaps Aziraphale noticed that Crowley wasn't drinking with his usual voracity, but if so, he made no mention of it as he downed each new cup he poured for himself. And Crowley watched, for the most part, as Aziraphale tittered on about his latest library acquisitions and recent customer oustings. Fluff, all of it—but the demon made an occasional polite noise of interest, as he'd grown used to. Of course he was enraptured by the angel's new T.S. Eliot first edition, yes, do go on. 

He wasn't listening, of course. Crowley was looking for the cracks in Aziraphale's walls, because they were _up_ . It was in the way the angel held himself, the way neither his posture nor his mouth could rest. The way he let each sip from his glass punctuate every phrase like some odd drinking game. ( _Drink every time the angel rehashes things he knows I know already. Take a shot whenever he brings up the weather, or when he offers wine or whiskey instead._ Crowley would be hammered in no time.) 

Like this, Aziraphale was a ticking time bomb, waiting to burst. Not that Crowley was any better, with the irritable bouncing of one heel on the rug and his contrived sprawl over the settee against the bookshelf that formed one wall of Aziraphale's office. Not that Crowley ever sprawled naturally, but this time his guard was up as much as Aziraphale's was, which made for even more lankiness. This was, maybe, the least comfortable Crowley had felt in the bookshop in a long, long time.

The angel fell silent, tight-lipped and veritably brooding. What was that stupid expression? _If you've got nothing nice to say, shove it where the sun don't shine?_ That wasn't the idiom at all, but it might as well be, the way Aziraphale liked to play it. Crowley rubbed at his temple, elbow propped up on the arm of his chair.

Suddenly, he was sick of this game, sick of waiting for Aziraphale to have the first and last word.

"What's the matter with you?" Crowley demanded, an annoyed hiss bleeding into his voice.

Aziraphale turned his head to meet Crowley's obscured gaze stubbornly. Past a certain threshold, alcohol made the angel argumentative. "Me?" He looked the demon up and down. "You're the one who's being so-so _disagreeable_."

"Oh, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about," the demon retorted. "Glazing over your feelings with the scotch and the book talk—I can see what you're doing, angel. I'm not some dumb human you can fool with that smile."

"I don't see how I'm at fault here," Aziraphale said matter-of-factly, looking very put-out.

Crowley sat forward, exasperated. "You aren't!" 

"Then if it's such a trifle why are you kicking up such a—a great fuss, Crowley? For goodness sake."

What was the fuss? What was the fuss—the frustrated pinch in Crowley's brow softened into concern as he formed the answer on his tongue. He gripped his knees for some sort of grounding.

"Those text messages," he blurted, then paused to search Aziraphale's face. "Why are you trying to act as though things are fine? That _you're_ fine?"

There was something akin to the shiver of a violin string, plucked soft but sure, rippling the tension in the air. Panic, confusion, the upwelling of unpleasant memories—Crowley sensed them all, and the brief disarmament betrayed by the subconscious parting of Aziraphale's lips told the demon he was, painfully, on the mark.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, and this time it sounded like a plea, a warning. As though he was afraid to hurt Crowley. As though Crowley hadn't hurt him first. The angel stared hard down into the bottom of his glass in thought before he admitted, “I just don’t understand why you couldn’t have… told me beforehand."

"Didn't expect to sleep so long," Crowley murmured. "Half a day at most, usually."

"I know," Aziraphale said, a little sharply, before repeating more softly, "I know. And you're entitled, of course, to rest how you choose and for however long you wish. You're a," he let out a humourless laugh and squeezed the bridge of his nose, "a free demon, after all."

"I made you worry."

"You know me," Aziraphale joked weakly, "there isn't a thing I _don't_ worry about."

 _This is different,_ Crowley wanted to say. _I never want you to worry about me, you shouldn't have to worry about me._ But that would be too revealing an admission, so he settled for a quiet, "I know. You– in one of your messages. You worried about my plants."

The angel was quiet too, and there was a glassy look to his gaze as he stared somewhere off in the corner. Crowley's eyes widened in shock as he recognised that look as _teary_.

He'd never, ever seen Aziraphale cry, and to a certain extent didn't know if the angel ever had.

  
  
  


"Aziraphale." Crowley said, his voice laden with emotion: caring, yearning, _love_. Aziraphale's hands began to shake, and he quickly placed his tumbler on the desk, not trusting himself to keep it from dropping. The bottle beside him refilled as he sobered up, and the feelings the scotch had suppressed returned.

His heart felt imposing in his chest, and it ached like nothing else could. There was the threat of spilling over stinging at the edges of his eyes, and Aziraphale gripped his hands together, tight, to try and stop it (in vain).

No, he wasn't fine. He could try to avoid it as much as he liked, but what reason was there now other than reflex? Than fleeing from conflict? 

(Aziraphale didn't like to fight hand-to-hand, even in words.)

The truth was, he was embarrassed. Embarrassed, because he lacked the mettle to let Crowley rest without inundating him with dozens of attempts for contact. Embarrassed, because he tried to gloss over it all and act as though Crowley's "nap" had done no damage to his spirit. He was embarrassed because he couldn't stop thinking about the last time Crowley had gone off and slept for longer than planned, and how inexorably lonely that had been. This was the present, not the past, and Aziraphale certainly knew that. It wasn't an anxiety he could control—it was paranoia, this fear of losing Crowley. He'd done stupid things in its name before.

"Aziraphale," Crowley repeated as he took off his sunglasses ( _his eyes, Aziraphale couldn't lie to those eyes)_ and honey-amber met Aziraphale's gaze pleadingly. "If you really want me to, I'll drop it. I'm sorry I slept so long without telling you, I really am—but don't shut me out," the demon got out all at once, and then his voice cracked. "I can't take any more."

The dam broke, unbidden, and tears trickled down the contours of Aziraphale's face. Oh Lord, he'd been so unfair.

Crowley froze at the edge of his seat, gaping as Aziraphale felt dampness soak into his collar. "Er– I mean," Crowley stammered in alarm before cursing, "ah, fuck."

"I'm sorry. You must remember," Aziraphale choked, wiping wetness from his cheeks with his fingers, "the last time. When you slept after that argument we had in St. James's Park. And then we had that– that row, four months ago." Crowley's expression creased in both realisation and confusion, so Aziraphale assured, "it was over nothing, really. I can hardly remember what it was about. Something about a prank, perhaps. When you didn't answer the phone the next day, Crowley—I was _beside_ myself."

"Angel," Crowley breathed, achingly.

"The thought of another eighty years without you, _losing_ you—it's unthinkable." Aziraphale shook his head, as though shuddering at the notion. "Funny, isn't it? Eighty years should be a blink of an eye, for beings like us; we've been around for millennia. Time seemed to pass much quicker, back in the day."

The longer Aziraphale remained on Earth, the more the scales by which he naturally measured things, like time and space, became human-proportioned. He still lost track of time, sometimes, and days could pass when he was engrossed in a good book, but never more than a month or two, let alone a year. Eighty years was now a lifetime.

"I didn't know," Crowley croaked guiltily, holding his cheek. "Angel, why didn't you…say something? After the Blitz?"

The answer was simple, and it flowed out of Aziraphale with ease. "I was just happy to have you back," he confessed. That vulnerable sentence suspended itself in the air, as close as words had ever gotten to naming the marrow-deep _thing_ that pulsed between them.

  
  


Crowley didn't know what to do with himself. He couldn't fully process what Aziraphale was saying, so he searched for safer ground, a solution. "We, we can make up for lost time. Go for lunch at that brasserie you suggested, find another festival to go to. Oktoberfest is coming up, you like bratwurst," he prattled on, remembering the contents of Aziraphale's texts. "Anywhere you want to go. I'll be up this time, guarantee it."

"Yes, but—perhaps on another occasion," Aziraphale agreed, voice still a little tear-broken but coloured with a small smile. 

"Lunch tomorrow, then?" Crowley offered, continuing eagerly with this train of thought that seemed to be perking the angel up. He shrugged in emphasis. "Or anytime, really. S'not like I've anything better to do."

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, with the fond amusement so characteristic to his gentle chiding, "you—you don't have to try and make anything up to me." 

Now that was a funny concept. Crowley's mind bent over backwards to make sense of it, but didn't quite connect the dots. No, it wasn't—he had to—it wasn't right to just _not_ do anything to make amends. He was used to plying the angel with little gifts, little excursions, little favours, in this waltz they'd box stepped through for many, many years. Famously, Aziraphale claimed he couldn't dance anything other than the gavotte. Crowley couldn't really dance either. He just knew how to distract with the sway of his hips, a dazzling grin, an outstretched hand at the right time. To stop while the music still played would be uncharted territory.

The cushions beside him sank, and Crowley looked up to find Aziraphale had joined him on the settee. Uncharted territory indeed. The demon's eyes turned large and round as he moved to give Aziraphale room (or to give himself room?). He fell back into the deep-set sofa, bracketed, cornered. 

The angel's gaze gleamed with a sort of recognition as Crowley shifted, but he didn't flinch or shy away. No, Aziraphale was wise—he knew Crowley. Crowley didn't feel fearful or threatened. Where others were vulnerable, Crowley found his footing, and he could still strike—the distance he put between them simply echoed the immaterial gap they had never truly breached. 

"Then," Crowley said, breaking the disorienting silence, "what should I do?"

"Well you've already apologised," Aziraphale acknowledged with a raise of his eyebrows. "I forgave you, of course."

Crowley chose to take this in stride, against the will of the little voice in his brain that told him he couldn't. "Sure."

"I mean it. I owe you an apology, my dear." Aziraphale said. "I shouldn't have tried to deceive you by hiding my feelings. There's simply no justification for it."

"Angel, you were trying to protect the both of us. That's a plenty good reason. If I hadn't _exploded_ —"

  
  


Aziraphale almost laughed. Crowley, sweet Crowley, always tried to paint himself the villain even when the angel himself was far from innocent. He shook his head. "We'll be going around in circles, at this rate."

"I made you cry."

"A physiological response," Aziraphale quipped. "Comes with the corporation, I'm afraid."

"I don't like it," Crowley murmured softly, knitting his brow. Perhaps the demon meant for his words to come off as more petulant, but Aziraphale wasn't fooled. He could sense and almost see the tenderness in Crowley's chest, and it throbbed raw and red. Undoubtedly, Crowley knew Aziraphale could sense it, but he tried to salvage his reputation regardless. "You could turn it off. Save yourself the eye irritation."

In their long, long, existence, Aziraphale could not remember a time he had expressed to Crowley how grateful he was that Crowley _thought_ of him. That Crowley seemed to give a damn about what Aziraphale liked and what he didn't. About his comfort, at any given moment. Now seemed as good a time as any.

"I've never thanked you properly, have I?" He asked, after a beat.

"You thank me plenty," Crowley replied. "Practically every time we meet."

"Not properly. Not the way I ought to, and not for what I should," Aziraphale clarified. Something daunting and effervescent rose in his stomach as he mused, more to himself than to Crowley, "now that I _can._ "

"I'd say thanking me for a lift home is 'proper'," Crowley said, but Aziraphale knew the demon knew he was headed somewhere else with this. It was just too undemonic (whatever that meant, now that they were neither strictly angelic nor demonic) to lean into the sentimentality of it, to let it throw him off kilter. But oh, Aziraphale had to push on.

"Well," he began, his eyes flickering away and back again to meet Crowley's alert stare, "I'm not the most concise. It's rather difficult to," Aziraphale gestured superfluously, "to put this in simple terms, as it were. Can't just get to the heart of the matter so easily."

Crowley was unfazed. He nodded for Aziraphale to continue, his cheek propped up on his knuckles in full attentiveness. 

That was the difference between Crowley and the rest of being: Crowley listened. He cared. There were many different kinds of love, and Aziraphale somehow had the luck to be the subject of Crowley's affections, no matter how implicit. Perhaps now, Aziraphale could bring this to light.

"Years," he murmured, "decades, centuries, we've been…doing this." _This_ , their bond that was only fraternising by virtue of their respective former alliances. Superficially, it was easy to point and wag a finger at—Aziraphale had done so time and time again to patch the tear in his ethical fabric. Now, it was severed clean in two, its raw edges hand-felled into place. Its new cut suited Aziraphale just fine, hit him at the hinge of his wrist where it should have fallen all along. Were he wearing anything else, these next words wouldn't have been possible. "And through it all, you've—well, obviously you've been there. You were assigned to Earth, just as I was," the angel digressed, then took a breath. "I never realised how much I took your presence for granted."

Crowley lifted his chin, a furrow tightening his brow as though he didn't quite get what Aziraphale was saying. (Of course it was hard to comprehend—he was putting words to something they'd known was there all along but had never addressed. And still, Aziraphale knew he would fall short of hitting the core of it, would strike just to the side.) The demon's lips parted, primed for rebuke on instinct but stalling to hear what else Aziraphale had to say; it was as though his gut and heart struggled against one another. _Like looking into a mirror_ , Aziraphale thought.

"I pushed you away so many times, in so many ways," he said, a tremble in his tone. "And yet you returned just as many times, whether to my rescue or with an invitation for lunch. I was foolish to—to choose to believe it was all for the arrangement we had. But it was never just business, was it? Never just saving each other's hides to smooth over the reports."

"It wasn't," Crowley affirmed with a dry mouth, "never just business."

Aziraphale smiled a small smile. It was a rhetorical question, but the answer was good to hear. "You must have been upset with me. Furious, even. To tell you the truth I don't quite know why you're still here, the way I've treated you—it's indefensible."

There was a spike of fierceness in the air as Crowley bristled at those words. Aziraphale could read it, because rather than being borne of ire, it was protectiveness, it was devotion. It said: 

_Heaven bollocksed us all up, angel._

_I knew why, every time._

_It hurt, but I survived. Hurt is a second skin I can shed again and again, but it should never be to you. Never to you._

"Crowley, thank you," Aziraphale spoke, willing the wavering from his voice, "for not giving up on me. For staying true to yourself." The prickling was back in his eyes, and he kept his hands clasped together tight as though in prayer. "You had strength where I did not."

  
  


Words failed. Words failed Crowley, many times, but never more than now. He was shaken, stirred, the carefully frozen walls of his heart thawing under attack. What could he do but reach out one unsteady palm, upturned in offering, within Aziraphale's eye-shot beside the angel's hands? He didn't take Aziraphale's hand outright, that would still be too presumptuous despite the palpable emotion in the air. Aziraphale saw Crowley's proffered hand and took it without hesitation. 

Crowley's breath caught. He looked up to find Aziraphale's tear-brimmed gaze awash with tenderness and understanding. There was a squeeze of fingers, but Crowley didn't register whose. Touch: a funny, compulsive thing.

"Oh my dear," Aziraphale laughed wetly before taking a shaky breath. "I don't think I ever want to be apart from you again."

"Angel," Crowley rasped, begging—for what? He's so close to what he's wanted for as long as he could remember. 

"No, I really don't think I could bear it," Aziraphale determined, beginning to smile in earnest as he let their twined hands rest more naturally on the throw-covered leather between them. "This may become an issue."

Crowley clambered forward till he sat level with the angel at the edge of the settee. "S'not though right now, is it?"

"Not at all, no. Far from it."

They'd held hands before, but never for the pure, simple pleasure of it. But this, the edges of Aziraphale contained in that flesh, those thick fingers, they mingled with the edges of Crowley's own being, a thrilling blurring of lines. There could be more.

"Can I hug you?" Crowley asked, bolder for the hope expanding in his chest. 

"Please," Aziraphale implored, detangling their hands to catch Crowley as he sprung forward. In for a penny, in for a pound.

For this was how it should have been all along, wasn't it? Crowley's cheek tucked against Aziraphale's neck, Crowley's arms around Aziraphale and Aziraphale's around Crowley. Their hearts beating wildly, freely in counterpoint. 

Finally, the crashing together of magnets held apart but no longer.

"This is forward of me," Aziraphale breathed into the air above them, his eyes closed because he didn't need them to feel this moment. "Too forward—too fast—of me, I think," he amended, "but I would like to live with you." Crowley tightened his hold, sinking deeper against the angel's chest. 

"I like fast," he murmured, his lips barely there against Aziraphale's collar. 

"I'd like to be your good morning," Aziraphale added, tilting his head so it would rest against Crowley's with comforting weight, "your every good night, if you'll have me."

Yes. The answer was yes, and Crowley's head spun with elation as they basked in each other for a while longer.

  
  


Not all the mornings are good, and neither are all the nights. That is the earthly experience, after all. 

There is a lot of cursing, a lot of frustration, a lot of misunderstanding—understandable, given he and Aziraphale had lived alone for the better part of six thousand years. Moving in together was one of their more slapdash ideas, and neither of them are fully used to cohabiting.

But there's also a lot of laughter, a lot of joy, and above all else, a lot of love. Crowley's sense for the stuff has been tempered with time, now that he's opened his senses to the steady fountain of affection that is his angel. Aziraphale really had been holding back, all those years.

Crowley still sleeps, though never for too long. A week, at most. But he never wakes in an anxious sweat or with the nagging feeling of something being wrong, because if he wanders downstairs into the lounge, or into the library, he'll find Aziraphale there, as sure as the sun rises in the east. And Aziraphale will put down his reading, reach up to Crowley, and collect him in his arms. 

Ivy creeps up the walls of their quaint little cottage by the sea day by day. With it, Crowley finds himself wondering less and less whether or not he deserves this happy ending. Instead he wonders, more and more: what else is there to look forward to in these waking hours of his? What else is there, when there's already the life he and Aziraphale have carved for themselves?

If there can even be greater bliss than this paradise on Earth, Crowley intends to find it with Aziraphale by his side—awake, together.

**Author's Note:**

> **Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos are much appreciated.♥︎**
> 
> You can find me on my [main](https://twitter.com/ingthing) and my [18+](https://twitter.com/ingafterdark) Twitter profiles.


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